Backing up files and other data helps to protect against accidental loss, data corruption, hardware failures, and natural disasters. A backup involves the participation of many different components. Typically, there is a client having the data to be backed up, a central server to coordinate the backup, and a storage device in which the backups are stored. There can be dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of clients to backup. A backup environment can be highly dynamic where the number of backup clients and data transfers vary greatly. The overall performance of a backup depends upon the capabilities of the various components. Generally, as the number of backup clients and data transfers increase, backup performance decreases. For example, the time to complete a backup may extend beyond the backup window or time allotted for a backup, or the backup system may become overloaded and backups may terminate or backups may stall.
Unfortunately, a backup administrator often has very little visibility into the performance of the backup environment until it is too late, i.e., a backup unexpectedly stalls or terminates because of a system overload. One reason is because information regarding the capabilities of the backup components, such as the capability of the storage appliance, is not shared with the central server. There is a need to provide increased and continuous visibility into the performance of a backup environment, including alerts and other notifications, in order to detect performance issues before such issues become serious problems.
The subject matter discussed in the background section should not be assumed to be prior art merely as a result of its mention in the background section. Similarly, a problem mentioned in the background section or associated with the subject matter of the background section should not be assumed to have been previously recognized in the prior art. The subject matter in the background section merely represents different approaches, which in and of themselves may also be inventions. EMC, Data Domain, Data Domain Restorer, and Data Domain Boost are trademarks of EMC Corporation.